"While we are all for innovation through creative design and testing, everything we do in Marketing boils down to the metrics. Creativity is a tool to drive action and conversions, making us very analytical and data-driven. Each month, we hold a deep dive Marketing Metrics Meeting where each person shares how different functional areas performed based on history, goals, and KPIs. "

Is your marketing department more analytical or creative?

While we are all for innovation through creative design and testing, everything we do in Marketing boils down to the metrics. Creativity is a tool to drive action and conversions, making us very analytical and data-driven. Each month, we hold a deep dive Marketing Metrics Meeting where each person shares how different functional areas performed based on history, goals, and KPIs.

What's the most interesting project you've worked on thus far?

In order to fully understand how people are searching and interacting with paid advertisements on Google, I put together a proposal for additional spend so that we could rapidly evaluate the full impact of the channel. During the course of a month, we tested various search terms and got a better understanding of what position on the page provided the best balance of cost and quality. For instance, if someone is searching "restaurant pos system" they are generally high quality and convert at a high rate down the funnel. The project was so interesting because we were able to take various tests that we would have been testing over the course of months to years and understand their impact quickly and efficiently.

What tools are in your marketing stack?

We certainly love our tools in marketing. The whole teams revolves around Salesforce and Hubspot. Also, we organize our projects and priorities on Trello and Confluence (or what we call our Wiki pages). Some of the other tools we use include SEMrush, Google Analytics, Google Adwords, Wistia, Facebook Ads Manager & Business Platform, Bing Ads Platform, Perfect Audience, AdRoll, Outreach.io, the Adobe Suite, Google Drive, Hootsuite, LiveChat, and SurveyMonkey.

What do you do on a day-to-day basis?

On a day-to-day basis I manage our paid media and email channels. With paid media, we drive thousands of marketing-qualified leads through channels like Adwords, Bing, Facebook, Instagram, review sites such as Capterra and Software Advice, and any additional channels we find feasible. I track these leads down the funnel and tie back the spend to understand how much we are spending to deliver new marketing-sourced customers. With email, we create nurture streams and follow up paths and are constantly testing and swapping out subject lines, content, and more to continue to push leads down the funnel.

What excites you about your company?

To be honest, there are few things that don't excite me about Toast. We possess the ability and responsibility to have such an impact on the restaurant industry, and everyone here knows and embodies that. One of our core values is "no ego", meaning that there is no task too big or small for anyone to accomplish if it means we are working for the better of the business. With that, you'll see our founders or CEO out on the floor, talking to everyone from marketing to engineers to support and more. I'm so excited to see all that we can accomplish in order to become the main thought leaders in the restaurant technology space.

What is your background and how did you end up in your current job?

I graduated with a degree in International Business and Marketing from Northeastern University in Boston. When I was finishing up my degree, I got into demand generation and marketing at QuickBase where I learned all about the funnel approach and allocating spend to deliver marketing-qualified leads. As I was finishing up my time at QuickBase, I learned of Toast through a colleague as well as the general buzz about the company that was emerging in the Boston tech industry. I saw Toast featured in various tech journals and knew that the opportunity was too good to pass up.

What's the hardest challenge you've had thus far in your job?

The hardest challenge I've personally had is understanding how spending on branding and awareness campaigns can affect the bottom of the funnel. We use marketing budget to primarily drive marketing-qualified leads, but have less of a grasp related to how getting the Toast name out in front of more people can be tied back to ROI. It is something that we are looking to understand more deeply as we are maximizing out current channels in terms of those who have requested more information about Toast (or what we call our MQLs).

How did you prepare for the interview for this role?

To prepare for my interview, I thought about all of my various projects and areas of expertise from my previous roles and how I could apply those findings to Toast specifically. That involved researching the current marketing efforts as well as gaining an understanding of the Toast business model holistically. I focused specifically on positioning myself within the role, and didn't just speak to my past experiences but instead how I could use those experiences to drive change and improvements within Toast. From my research, I found that Toast is very metrics focused, so I also thought about how I could apply specific quantitative results to my interview conversations.

What opportunities do you think this role prepares you for in the future?

This role has prepared me for an immense amount of opportunity in the future. We are very cross functional in nature which means that I work alongside sales, operations, product, and more. I am able to tackle various mindsets and align teams to work towards a shared goal. I am also prepared to be extremely metrics driven with my marketing efforts, ultimately boiling all spend and headcount down to ROI. Each day, I am pushed to learn and stretch my abilities which means that I am constantly growing both personally and professionally. That is important no matter where I end up in the future.

What unique skills have you developed over time in your role and at this company?

The most important and unique skill that I have developed over my time at Toast is metrics-driven marketing. As a marketing department, we focus on understanding and improving each step of the marketing process, and those improvements are measured based on goals. Goals are not arbitrarily assigned, but instead worked out between managers and reports to ensure that they are attainable yet challenging. Ultimately, we are all working towards the same goal of driving business; however, the various ways that we track and understand how we can increase our marketing impact is driven through our devotion to metrics and analysis which is extraordinarily unique compared to my past experiences.

What are some of the interview questions you were asked?

I was asked to discuss a time when I had to improve the funnel conversions and quality and provide any measurable results. Also, I was given a case study on marketing spend and lead quality. I was expected to do the numerical analysis (in spreadsheets) and then present my findings and recommendations for moving forward with the paid media program (slides and presentation).